Child Health Award

Watch the video to find out who has won this prestigious nursing award. Good luck to all the finalists!

The finalists for the Child Health Award

Clinical team
Chestnut Tree House Hospice
Families with children and young people requiring invasive ventilation wanted to access palliative care services, but the Chestnut Tree House Hospice workforce was unable to provide it. Led by practice development nurse Anna Jones, the clinical team launched Ventilation Month, which included 200 individual training sessions. With a new integrated care model, community nurses built trust and developed their skills by caring for patients at home, then during their first hospice stays. The team offers palliative care services to 15 invasively ventilated young people, including inhouse short breaks and respite care in the community. Feedback from families has been excellent.
 

Community children’s nursing team
Southern Health and Social Care Trust
Children and young people who needed intravenous (IV) antibiotics outside 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday, were forced to stay in hospital. This team set about transforming itself to support IV delivery at home. A programme of supervision and support ensures all the nurses are trained to safely administer and monitor any effects as lone workers. The initiative has reduced hospital visits and, in many cases, prevented admissions, dramatically improving the experience for the child/young person who can enjoy a more normal family life. It has also saved hundreds of inpatient bed days.
 

Mental and physical health rotation team
Barts Health NHS Trust/NELFT NHS Foundation Trust
This team has devised a rotation system to meet the growing need of nurses to have the skills to provide mental and physical health nursing care to children and young people in their respective settings. All the nurses who took part from a general paediatric ward at Whipps Cross University Hospital in London, Brookside mental health inpatient ward and the community children’s nursing team are now more skilled in providing holistic care, and the children and young people and their families have responded positively through feedback. Each setting has adopted elements of best practice from the others to improve the experience of their patients.
 

Giselle Padmore-Payne
King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Roald Dahl transition senior nurse specialist Ms Padmore Payne supports and empowers children and young people with non-malignant haematological conditions, such as sickle cell and thalassaemia, as they move to adult services. As well as providing young people with one-to-one guidance and advocacy, engaging this hard-to-reach group through social media, WhatsApp and video presentations, Ms Padmore-Payne tirelessly organises transition workshops, patient support groups and peer mentoring. She receives excellent feedback for her patient-led pathway and has also developed training and resources for her colleagues.
 

School nursing special needs team
Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust
Uptake of vaccinations among children with autism and learning disabilities in Bradford and Keighley was low and the process was distressing for all involved. This school nurse team introduced an immunisation desensitisation programme. All preparation and vaccinations are delivered in the school by a familiar school nurse with the child’s support worker. The process is safer, less distressing for all, and more children are accepting vaccinations. Parents and carers are trained in desensitisation techniques and report their children are now able to have blood tests during annual health checks. The initiative is being developed into a package to support practitioners across the country.